Joe Wolf wrote:
I don't know if that's an accurate figure or not, but it seems like a lot of work for a spammer that can use any of thousands easier ways to send their messages. Additionally as Microsoft and others continue to lock down their products this should not be much of an issue.
It was misguided, but the basis for the idea is solid. 'Zombies' account for about 60% to 65% of my spam currently, and the percentage that comes from these hijacked computers has risen by over 50% since March, and despite the fact that Congress legalized static-type spammers (ones that own their spam servers instead of hijacking others).
These spam zombies start out as infected machines, and there is no doubt that some viruses were designed to be used to create networks of spam zombies. These viruses install the necessary SMTP software for delivering E-mail and they will phone home to report themselves ready for duty. It's widely reported as well that networks of zombies are leased by individuals for spamming. There are probably over 100,000 spam zombies in use during a 24 hour period based on statistics that I have seen from SenderBase.
The problem with this test is that a minority of infected computers will be used for spamming, and there is no good way to isolate those machines from others. Over time, this list of IP's would probably cover more than half of the active zombies, but it would also cover many other unexploited sources. There are other issues such as servers bouncing viruses to forged from addresses and truely dynamic IP's that IMO make this test impractable.
Matt
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